How Newsweek Determined America's Greatest Workplaces for Mental Wellbeing

Newsweek recently published its inaugural ranking of America's Greatest Workplaces for Mental Wellbeing. Done in partnership with data researcher Plant-A, the list features 750 U.S. employers that are making strides when it comes to focusing on their employees' mental health.

The process of assembling the ranking involved five steps, before we arrived at the final list.

First, Plant-A carried out an anonymized survey with HR professionals to identify key factors that influence employee satisfaction. Topics that were analyzed included compensation and benefits, work-life balance, working environment, and training and career progression.

Those findings were then used to fine-tune an extensive employee survey that was the central component of the second step.

That survey, which was conducted anonymously in the last quarter of 2023, asked 196,000 U.S. employees to assess U.S. companies they were familiar with and which had more than 500 workers. More than 1.2 million company reviews were collected of companies across 78 industry segments. Also, results from America's Greatest Workplaces 2023 were integrated into the overall findings with a reduced weight, adding more than 340,000 company reviews from more than 55,000 employees.

The scores that each company received were driven by survey-takers' responses across four topics: recognition of the importance of mental health, the role of managers who care about mental health, employer-provided mental wellbeing programs and working conditions that take mental and physical health into account.

Also, recipients' responses were weighted based on their level of familiarity with a company. For example, the input from an individual who knew an employee at a particular company would be weighted less than an individual who actually worked at the company.

According to Plant-A, the survey revealed that a majority of respondents—73 percent—perceive their employers positively in terms of mental wellbeing. However, with 27 percent expressing dissatisfaction, "there still remains significant room for improvement."

Lower satisfaction rates were evidenced among part-time workers (62 percent of whom were satisfied), non-managerial staff (64 percent), early career professionals as well as silver workers (65 percent), alongside specific segments of the workforce, such as LGBTQ+ individuals and employees with disabilities, Plant-A added.

The third part of the process involved PrivCo, a search engine for private company data. That firm supported a Desk Research Initiative to identify and document different key performance indicators regarding the extent to which employees feel supported and enjoy working, both overall and specifically in relation to mental wellbeing.

These indicators included metrics such as the range of corporate mental wellbeing initiatives and programs, and information and reviews from social media.

Fourth, Onclusive's Critical Mention media monitoring platform was used to investigate whether employers had been accused of any unfair workplace practices or had been reported for workplace harassment from December 2021 to December 2023. Employers who had engaged in such conduct were excluded from the ranking.

This media monitoring process was conducted several times to confirm the correctness of the final results.

Lastly, a validation process—a collaborative effort between the Plant-A research and the Newsweek editorial teams—reviewed the resulting list to avoid errors and discrepancies and to add an additional layer of scrutiny. The 750 companies with the highest final scores were divided into two tiers: those with 5,000 or more employees, and those with 1,000 to 4,999 employees.

The ranked companies are grouped into 78 industries, including consumer product manufacturers, logistics services, banking, publishing and health care.

"Our findings conclusively demonstrate that also fostering a positive corporate culture and promoting work-life balance are pivotal," Plant-A said of the ranking. "Companies with high mental wellbeing ratings are three times more likely than companies with low ratings to have a management that is consistent and loyal toward their employees and a climate of trust and transparency, to encourage critical thinking and feedback, to support a healthy work-life balance, and to fairly and evenly balance workloads."